Kathleen (Katie) Kokolus is a research scientist at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, NY. She received BS and MS degrees from Duquesne University before earning a PhD in Tumor Immunology from SUNY Buffalo. Dr. Kokolus also did a post-doctoral fellowship at ... Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey, PA. Broadly, Dr. Kokolus's research interests include immunology, stress, and oncology with a focus on studying immunotherapy, one of the most promising treatments available for patients with advanced cancers. In addition to research, Dr. Kokolus is highly motivated to educate and train the next generation of cancer researchers. She teaches graduate students and mentors trainees in the laboratory. Dr. Kokolus has been involved in the scientific planning and organization of several local, regional, and international conferences focused on immunology and cancer research.

Dr. Gibson completed her B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Michigan State University, and her Ph.D. in Immunology at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. During her postdoctoral training, she studied response to cancer vaccination in outbred animal models ... which ignited her interest in the role the host plays in immune response and cancer immunotherapy outcomes. Upon receiving an R37 for the development and testing of novel imaging agents to detect immune activity in situ, she was promoted to Assistant Professor in the Oncology Department at Wayne State. Her independent research program is primarily focused on the identification of resistance mechanisms to immune checkpoint inhibitors and anti-tumor antibodies, also known as targeted immunotherapy. Utilizing heterogeneous mouse models, her team has not only directly demonstrated the influence of host genetics on treatment efficacy, but they have identified genes and pathways involved in therapeutic success or failure. The translational potential of these findings is under investigation to establish biomarkers of response and identify promising new actionable targets for co-therapeutic intervention. She is also interested in cancer health disparities and the role of genetic ancestry in treatment outcomes, with the goal of contributing to the advancement of personalized medicine to increase health equity.

Dr. Shannon Oda earned a Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and completed her postdoctoral training with Dr. Philip Greenberg at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. She has received several awards, including the Evergreen Fund ... Award and the LLS Career Development Program Special Fellow Award, and has been invited to give talks internationally. Dr. Oda joined the Seattle Children's Research Institute in 2020, where she is an Assistant Professor at the Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer Research and the University of Washington School of Medicine. Her research focuses on improving T cell immunotherapy, which uses immune cells to target and destroy cancer cells. She has identified several obstacles that inhibit immune cells from effectively eradicating tumor and she is inventing new ways to engineer T cells to overcome these obstacles and improve immunotherapy of hematological and solid tumors.

John Quackenbush is Professor of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Professor at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. John's PhD was in Theoretical Physics but a fellowship to work ... on the Human Genome Project led him through the Salk Institute, Stanford University, and The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), before joining Harvard in 2005. John's research uses massive data to probe how many small effects combine to influence our health and risk of disease. His published work has more than 87,000 citations and among his honors is recognition in 2013 as a White House Open Science Champion of Change. In 2012 he founded Genospace, a precision medicine software company that was sold to Hospital Corporation of America in 2017.

Dr. Sandro Matosevic is an associate professor in the College of Pharmacy at Purdue University, and is a member of the Purdue Center for Cancer Research. Dr. Matosevic runs an NIH-funded research program focused on the development and use of cell-based therapies with natural ... killer cells and CAR-engineered immune cells in the treatment of cancer and holds a number of patents on the engineering and utilization of NK cells and stem cell-derived NK cells in cancer immunotherapy. Dr. Matosevic is on the editorial board of several journals, acts on pharmaceutical advisory boards, and has been on committees for several organizations advancing the development and standardization of cell-based therapies, and is current chair of the BIO Focus group of the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Technology and Education. Dr. Matosevic obtained his graduate degree from University College London and completed his postdoctoral training at the Scripps Research Institute.